


The Impermanence of All Things

by tittysatan



Series: Zombies in Love [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Fightsex, Getting Together, Hatesex, Jashinism, Kismesis, M/M, canon-typical discussion of murder, don't know what to call it really, except it's not actually v clear how "together" they are, more or less, the tale of the heike, they do love each other though, they fuck like extremely violent rabbits but they never kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:40:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27955565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tittysatan/pseuds/tittysatan
Summary: Dying a slow, miserable death, Hidan wonders if Kakuzu will come save him.
Relationships: Hidan/Kakuzu (Naruto)
Series: Zombies in Love [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2156628
Comments: 6
Kudos: 112





	The Impermanence of All Things

It takes a long time to starve to death, and it feels even longer when every part of you has been torn to shreds and buried in rubble, and it’s dark and cold and hurts like no one’s ever hurt before. At least, Hidan assumed it did. He’d never starved to death before, though, so what did he know. 

The pain was first, fire searing away everything else and never letting up. All his fragmented cells were trying to pull their way back together but they couldn’t, there was rock and dirt in the way, and how was he supposed to think when even his brain had been torn apart and there was nothing left of him but raw nerves and agony?

Eventually it faded, though, or he’d gotten used to it enough that rage could bubble up. Rage at that stupid little shit who got him, and how fucking _annoying_ it was that he’d lost to a damn kid, and how Kakuzu was gonna be all smug and shitty when he finally came and pulled him out of this stupid hole. Fuck, he was gonna be _insufferable_. And even after Hidan kicked the shit out of that kid and sacrificed him, he was still gonna have to put up with Kakuzu giving him a hard time for it.

Assuming Kakuzu even came and got him.

That was what finally snapped Hidan’s thoughts into something resembling coherence. He was dying. He could _feel_ it, this slow awful drawn-out loss of self. He was dying at the bottom of a pit of rocks and there was only one person in the world who could save him, and Hidan really didn’t know if he could trust that Kakuzu would.

It wasn’t like they were friends or anything. They were barely even a functional team. They fought more and messier than anyone else in the Akatsuki, that was for sure, and Kakuzu was constantly grumbling about how annoying he was and telling him to shut up and threatening to kill him. 

It was like...affectionate, though. At least it was for Hidan. And he was pretty sure it was for Kakuzu too, even if he’d never really said anything like that.

They were at each other’s throats from basically day one. Hidan had been having the time of his life running around the countryside, killing people and offering them to his god, and he didn’t wanna tie himself down with some stupid organization and some stupid partner. 

“I don’t like it either,” Kakuzu had said when they’d split off from Pain and Konan, “but it’s easier than fighting with them. You can still do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t interfere with work, so just stay out of my way. Otherwise, I’ll kill you like I killed the others.”

“You do realize you can’t, right?” Hidan said. “Like, you do know what ‘immortal’ means, right?”

“I don’t want to hear that from an idiot like you.”

“You’re welcome to take a swing, gramps, but you’re not getting anywhere!”

Kakuzu stopped in his tracks and slowly turned to look at Hidan. “You know what, I think I will.”

Fighting Kakuzu was  _ fun _ . Sparring had always bored Hidan, since he was expected to hold back, and most of the shinobi he’d killed had barely put up a decent fight. He couldn’t die; what were they supposed to do to him? Kakuzu, though… He couldn’t die either, so in the end, they were just throwing themselves at each other for the sheer pleasure of doing violence, of pain given and received. It made Hidan’s nerves sing fire. Every cut and strike and bloody grin, every time their eyes met and their bodies touched, made him alive.

So yes, it was kind of a sex thing.

It was pretty obvious it was for Kakuzu too, since on something like their second night as partners he ended a fight by slamming Hidan facefirst into a tree and practically tearing his pants off. “You actually get off on this?” Kakuzu murmured in his ear, one hand pinning Hidan’s arm behind his back, the other reaching down to trace callused fingers over his erection. “Freak.”

“Look who’s talking,” Hidan said, grinding his ass up against Kakuzu’s own hard-on. “You gonna fuck me or no?”

Kakuzu fucked him.

 _“Not to stroke your ego, but no one fucks like you,” Hidan told him once, when his body was heavy with afterglow and Kakuzu was stitching him back up. “Like, most fellas are scared to get really_ rough, _even when I tell them not to hold back. You, though… You fuck like you wanna put me in the ground.”_

_“Probably because I do,” Kakuzu said, fibers slithering out of him and into Hidan’s flesh, closing the wounds he’d opened._

Kakuzu drove into him raw and it hurt like Jashin’s blessing, making Hidan all but scream from pain and pleasure. “Oh fuck...”

“And you’re usually so whiny when it comes to pain,” Kakuzu said, not moving behind him. 

“It’s all about context, okay!?” Hidan snapped. “Now hurry up…!”

“Needy slut,” Kakuzu muttered under his breath. He began to thrust, hard and fast right from the start, and Hidan almost blacked out. It felt like he was gonna split like an axe splitting wood. It was _incredible_. It was only when Kakuzu told him to shut up that he even realized he’d been moaning his head off, wordless breathless sounds he couldn’t hold in if he tried.

“I... I, caaaaan’t…” Hidan somehow managed to get out, moans suddenly muffled as Kakuzu slapped a hand over his mouth and stitched it shut. 

“Much better,” Kakuzu said, and Hidan could hear the smirk in his voice, the prick. He might’ve done something about it if Kakuzu didn’t start thrusting again, harder than ever, reaching around to jerk him off as he fucked him, and Hidan couldn’t think to remember why he’d been annoyed. He couldn’t tell anymore where the pain ended and the pleasure began. All he knew was that he wanted it, he wanted _more_ , he _needed_ it, he was completely helpless with his arm pinned behind his back and his face against a tree and he’d never felt so alive until all of a sudden something pushed him over the edge and he’d never understood so well why they called it the ‘little death.’ This was what it felt like when he offered himself and foe together to Jashin, this death that wasn’t the end, this ecstatic glimpse of the other side -- well, not quite. This was just some good ol’ secular fucking and a good ol’ secular orgasm. 

Shit, did it feel incredible though.

Hidan was barely conscious, held up only by the cock inside him and the hand on his arm, when Kakuzu gave a quiet groan behind him as he came, setting Hidan moaning again as he filled his insides with hot, stinging cum. There was a quiet moment as they both caught their breath. Kakuzu pulled out, less roughly than Hidan had expected. Then he unceremoniously dropped him.

Hidan took a moment to get his head straight and find his pants before turning to glare up at Kakuzu. “Mmph.”

“...maybe I’ll just leave you like that,” Kakuzu said, and Hidan could hear that same shitty smirk. “You’re less irritating when you can’t talk.”

Hidan reached for his scythe.

“Oh, fine.”

“You ruined my pants!” he said as soon as the threads stitching his mouth shut were out. “I liked these!”

“You didn’t seem to mind too much,” Kakuzu said, scowling down at him. “Now hurry up and get yourself together. We still need to reach our destination and make camp.”

“I just got fucked inside out and I have no pants, I’m not going anywhere!” Hidan said, crossing his arms. “Can’t we just camp here tonight? We can make up the distance tomorrow.”

“We’re already behind.”

“Well unless you’re willing to carry me, we’re not going anywhere.”

They camped there tonight.

“I’m never doing that again,” Kakuzu said, settling in for his shift on watch. “You’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

“Y’know what, Kakuzu? Eat a dick,” Hidan said, trying and failing to get comfortable on the ground. “I’m not exactly dying for an encore myself. You always this much of a jerk after you get your rocks off?”

“Only when I’ve got a reason.”

“You are the _worst_.”

They lasted a few days.

“What happened to more trouble than I’m worth?” Hidan said, shit-eating grin on his bloody face as Kakuzu pushed him to his knees in front of him in the stall of a public restroom.

“The same thing that happened to you not dying for an encore,” Kakuzu said as Hidan pulled his cock out and got to work.

They basically dropped the pretense after that. Did they like each other? No. Did they like working together? Also no. Was that going to stop them from banging constantly? _Another no_. Kakuzu fucked him _right_ \-- no tenderness, no restraint, no kissing and foreplay and ‘are you sure?’ when all Hidan wanted was to get railed so hard he saw the face of god -- and it was clear he thought Hidan fucked him right too. He wouldn’t keep coming back for more otherwise.

They still very much did not like each other, though. At least at first.

Hidan had never wanted much to do with anyone. He had no interest in any of the things most people seemed to be interested in, and most people thought he was some kind of homicidal maniac, which was only _half_ correct. He had perfectly valid reasons for his homicide, thank you very much. So he’d worked alongside people when he had to, and he’d had one-night-stands and flings, but he’d never actually spent much time around any given person.

Until Kakuzu. 

It was the immortality that caught his interest first, of course. Hidan barely understood how his own worked -- the Jashinists who performed the various rituals had explained it, but it was all a bit over his head, and he couldn’t exactly go back and ask since he’d killed them all. In his defense it was part of the ritual. But the point stood. He knew he was impossible to kill by anything other than malnourishment, the stupidest imaginable way to die, but he didn’t really know _why_. He’d thought maybe if he figured out how Kakuzu’s worked, he could learn something from that.

Hidan did not learn jack shit, of course. Both because Kakuzu had absolutely no interest in explaining anything, and because whatever mess he had going on with the hearts and the hair was pretty obviously nothing like Hidan’s deathlessness. But they were still stuck together. Which was unfortunate, because when they weren’t kicking the everloving shit out of each other, Kakuzu was kind of obnoxious. 

He was  _ boring _ , for one. He never said shit and he never wanted Hidan to say shit either, like it wasn’t way weirder and more uncomfortable just to be in total silence. He might be even more petty than Hidan was, which was honestly pretty impressive -- despite being a grown-ass, ninety year old man, he sure did get pissy and sulk over every little thing. And he was stingy, and he didn’t respect Jashinism, and by all appearances he was physically incapable of not being an antagonistic bastard. Hidan might like arguing with him, and he might like fighting with him, but he did not like Kakuzu himself.

The thing was, it took Hidan a while to realize, but… Kakuzu might  _ actually be _ physically incapable of not being an antagonistic bastard. It was literally his only mode. And that was just  _ funny _ . Sure, Hidan was also a piece of shit most of the time, but that was a deliberate choice on his part.

Once he noticed that, it all kinda started falling into place. No, Kakuzu was not secretly a nice guy with a rough exterior. He was a dick. But he wasn’t, like…  _ Exclusively  _ a dick. He did genuinely nice things from time to time -- they were always just framed in hostility, like he’d never learned how to be friendly and didn’t really understand the concept. He got him pants after that first time they fucked, nice leather ones like the pair he ruined, even though they must’ve been expensive. He always stitched him up after fights, even though he knew Hidan could heal on his own. He’d pick things up for Hidan when he dropped or forgot them, even if it was things that didn’t matter. Stuff like that, small stuff he didn’t have to do, but did anyways.

Hidan didn’t really think about it much until one time they were at an inn together, doing their nails (man, the Akatsuki uniform was weird). “I hate trying to get my right hand, I always fuck it up,” Hidan was grumbling. “It turns out all messy, and I have to try and clean it up with nail polish remover, and I always take too much off and have to do it again and it’s this stupid vicious cycle. Why the fuck do we have to wear nail polish anyways? Who decided this?”

“Shut up,” Kakuzu said, holding out his left hand, palm up.

“Huh?”

“Give it here. I’d rather do it myself than listen to you whine all night.”

Hidan was in shock for a moment, before giving Kakuzu the bottle of nail polish and putting his hand in his. “And here I thought you _liked_ making me whine,” he said, smirking.

“I told you to shut up.”

Hidan watched Kakuzu as he worked, neatly brushing on the paint with the practiced air of one who’d been forced to do this for a while by the bizarre whims of their organization, palm warm and callused against Hidan’s. This was definitely the most intimate thing they’d ever done, which was something considering how often they fucked. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done something this intimate with _anyone_ , actually. It was...weird. 

He didn’t hate it, though.

“Do mine after yours dry,” Kakuzu said when he was done, screwing the cap back onto the bottle.

“Seriously?”

“I’m not doing anything without getting something in return.”

“Yeah, but--”

“Just shut up and do it.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hidan sighed. That was exactly Kakuzu’s brand of bullshit, after all, so it tracked, even if Kakuzu was practically ambidextrous and his nails always looked perfect.

So they watched bad sitcoms on the hotel room TV until Hidan figured his nails were probably dry. “Alright, let’s get this over with.”

He didn’t look up at Kakuzu as he did his nails, didn’t think about what this was, or what it meant, or if it meant anything at all. It didn’t matter, he didn’t care. It was just mutual convenience.

They fucked naked in the bed that night -- Hidan’s legs up on Kakuzu’s shoulders, Kakuzu’s hair falling dark and loose around his uncovered face -- but they didn’t kiss.

And after that, Hidan started to notice. They never fought any less -- Hidan wouldn’t have wanted that anyways. But there were more of those moments. Sometimes Kakuzu would sigh and get them spare ribs instead of ramen. Sometimes he’d let Hidan cuddle up to him for warmth when it was cold and they were camping in the woods. Once, Hidan complained about his hair getting too long, and Kakuzu cut it for him. Without ever really realizing, he began to gather up those moments and hold them close.

He never thought about how he felt, though, or about how Kakuzu felt, not until it reached the point he couldn’t ignore it anymore.

“Hey, where’re you going?” Hidan asked as Kakuzu took a wrong branch in the road. “The meeting point’s the other way.”

“Detour.”

“Seriously!? After all the shit you gave me for ‘wasting time’ on my rituals?”

“I put up with that, so now you have to put up with this,” Kakuzu said, not even looking back. “It won’t take long and you won’t have to do anything, so just stop whining and come on.”

Hidan glared at Kakuzu’s back for another moment before sighing and walking after him. “Fine, fine… What is it, anyways?”

“You’ll see when we get there.”

Hidan rolled his eyes. “I’m rolling my eyes,” he said, when he realized Kakuzu wasn't looking.

“I don’t care.”

Hidan spent the walk guessing possibilities. A bounty station to pick up a new bingo book, maybe. Or a gambling den, they’d been to a few of those -- that’d probably take a while, though, and he’d said it’d be quick. Maybe a contact?

After a while he decided he didn’t actually care.

They arrived in a town first, small and quiet and civilian, then at a shop with the character for ‘book’ in the sign. A front, probably.

“Oh, Mr. Kakuzu!” the middle-aged woman behind the desk said as they stepped inside. “I see you got my message. Let me just step into the back and get it for you.”

It was a bookstore, alright. Light caught the dust motes in the air. It smelled of old paper. Hidan idly scanned the spines, pulled one at random and checked the price tag. Okay, yeah, this was definitely some kinda front, cause you’d have to be out of your mind to pay that much for a book.

“Don’t touch anything,” Kakuzu said, turning dark eyes on him.

“Fine, fine, whatever,” Hidan said, putting it back.

“Here we are,” the woman said, returning with a bundle in her hands and unwrapping it on the counter.

With a care Hidan had never seen from him before, Kakuzu opened the book and flipped through. It didn’t look like a jutsu or anything, just rows and rows of brushstroke characters. “How much?”

“Fifty thousand.”

“Thirty.”

“Mr. Kakuzu, we do this every time,” the woman said with a little laugh. “Fifty is the absolute lowest I’m willing to go.”

“Okay, what the fuck is going on?” Hidan said, cutting in.

“Shut up,” Kakuzu said, glaring.

“No! First of all, if I tried to spend that much on _anything_ you would literally skin me, second, what the hell is this that it’s so valuable, third, why not just kill her and take the damn thing?”

“I apologize for my partner,” Kakuzu said as the woman paled. “He’s an idiot.” He turned to Hidan, arms crossed. “First of all, I’d been accumulating money for decades before the Akatsuki even existed -- this is out of my private funds. Second, it’s a very old, one-of-a-kind text. Third, for the same reason we don’t kill people at the bounty office -- because I wouldn’t be able to get books here anymore.” He turned back to the woman, pulling a wad of cash from his coat and dropping it on the table. “Here’s fifty. I’m in a hurry today.”

“Thank you, I’ll be in touch!” the woman said, bowing just a little shakily as Kakuzu forcibly dragged Hidan from the shop.

“So it’s...just a book?” Hidan asked as they started off towards the place they should’ve been going to begin with.

“It is not ‘just a book,’” Kakuzu said, glaring down at him. “It is the only complete edition ever copied by the legendary calligrapher-monk Hoichi, nearly three hundred years ago. There isn’t another book like this in the world.”

“...it’s just a book,” Hidan said. “You’re such a damn miser, why is _this_ what you spend your money on?”

“I collect manuscripts like this,” he said. “Some of us have an appreciation for craftsmanship and literature. And besides, the value only increases over time.”

Hidan thought about it for a moment before laughing.

“What’s so funny.”

“No, it’s just… You really are an old man, huh?” he said, grinning up at Kakuzu. “I forget sometimes that you’re like a hundred, but that’s _such_ an old man hobby! What, do you play bingo too?”

“Shut up.”

“Yeah, yeah.” It made sense, somehow. Of course Kakuzu liked something like that. It was actually kinda cute.

When they were out of town, Kakuzu pulled the book from his coat, paging through as they walked. “So what book is it anyways?” Hidan asked, craning his neck to look.

Kakuzu showed him the cover.

“Something… Tale…?”

Kakuzu stopped dead in his tracks. “Hidan.”

“Yeah?”

“Are you… Can you not read?”

“I can too! Just...not some kanji.” He’d had to learn in school, of course, but he wasn’t much of a reader or a writer himself, so a lot of it had faded over time. “...most kanji.”

For the first and last time Hidan ever saw, Kakuzu burst out laughing.

“Shut the fuck up, it’s not funny!”

“It’s extremely funny,” Kakuzu said, and Hidan could hear his smirk. “I don’t know why I’m surprised, honestly. Of course I’d be stuck with an illiterate.”

“I’m not _illiterate_!” Hidan snapped like he definitely knew what that word meant.

“You really are hopeless,” Kakuzu said as he started walking again. 

“Fuck you too.”

There was another long silence; Kakuzu reading, Hidan sulking.

“The Tale of the Heike,” Kakuzu said suddenly.

It took a moment for Hidan to realize what he was talking about. “...oh, yeah, I’ve heard of that one.”

“I would hope so.”

“It’s really long, right?”

“Yes. That’s part of the reason complete, hand-written transcriptions are so rare.”

“Makes sense.”

They fell back into silence, but the air between them was warmer.

They reached the town they were heading to hours later than expected, ate cheap ramen at a stand, checked into their run-down hotel room.

_“You know,” Hidan said the first time Kakuzu booked them a room with one bed, “if you were literally anyone else, I’d think you were trying to get with me. But you really are just that cheap, aren’t you?”_

_“We’re sleeping in shifts. Two beds would be a waste of money,” Kakuzu said. “And it’s not like I ever needed a bed to 'get with you' before.”_

Kakuzu sat cross-legged on the bed and read his Tale of the Heike. Hidan leaned up against the wall and sharpened his scythe.

“The sound of the Gion Shōja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sāla flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline,” Kakuzu muttered under his breath, just barely loud enough for Hidan to hear over the sound of whetstone on metal. He stopped, cocking his head to listen. “The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night,” Kakuzu continued, attention fully on the book, “The mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind.”

Hidan realized what was happening.

 _What the fuck are you doing_ , he wanted to say, or _are you serious right now_ , or _this is some incredibly gay shit_ , or _I knew you liked me, I fucking knew it, you big dumb sap_. He didn’t. He knew the moment he said anything at all, Kakuzu would snap the book closed and tell him to shut up and that would be the end of it. So he didn’t. Hidan put down his scythe and whetstone and closed his eyes and let his partner read to him.

He couldn’t really follow the plot, if he was being honest. Too many characters, too many long names, too much flowery language. He’d never go out of his way to read this on his own. It sounded like a complete waste of time.

The deep roughness of Kakuzu’s voice, though, the effortlessness with which he navigated the difficult words, as though he’d read it a million times before -- that was nice.

Somewhere in chapter three, Hidan stood up from his seat against the wall and moved to the bed, sitting down behind Kakuzu and leaning his back against him, nestling in between the shapes of his masks.

Kakuzu kept reading.

At the time, Hidan had wondered if he was in love.

He still didn’t know if he liked Kakuzu, per say, but he liked being around him. He liked their meaningless arguments, the reckless abandon of their fights, the ecstatic violence which which they fucked. He liked this quiet soap-bubble intimacy neither of them would touch for fear it’d vanish. 

It didn’t matter, he decided. They were immortals -- it only made sense that their relationship would develop at the pace of those who had all the time in the world. There was no hurry to put a name on anything.

Of course, now Hidan was twenty-two years old and dying in a bloody pit and he didn’t know if Kakuzu was already dead or he just didn’t care enough to come get him and it was all such absolute _bullshit_. Some immortality. Some partner. What a raw fucking deal.

Most people wouldn’t have time to think about all of this. It was just over, and then you faced whatever came next, if anything _did_ come next. Even if it was drawn out, usually you’d be too distracted by pain or fear or whatever to do much philosophizing.

But Hidan had _weeks_. Weeks of being a smear on some rocks as his supposedly endless life drained from him very, very slowly. What a stupid, shitty, stupid, _stupid_ way to die.

He only knew for sure that time had passed when he felt himself starting to fade.

What would he even have done if Kakuzu came? If Kakuzu killed the people he needed to kill, dug him up, waited however long it took for Hidan to pull himself back into the shape of a person? He wasn’t about to throw his arms around him and kiss him and tell him he loved him or whatever. He just wanted things to go back to the way they were. He wanted the first thing he heard when he had ears again to be Kakuzu calling him an idiot for falling for such a stupid trap; he wanted the first thing he said when he had a mouth to be 'go fuck yourself.' He wanted to fight him as soon as he had arms and legs; he wanted to be fucked by him as soon as he had an ass. He wanted to listen to him read.

He wouldn’t just have left Hidan there. He wouldn’t. They must’ve gotten him too. In the end he wasn’t any better after all, was he.

 _Well, when I see him on the other side I’ll know for sure_ , was the last thing Hidan thought. _I can laugh at him then._


End file.
